Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 3,179 entries, all of them here in full.
December 3, 2025 · 333 words
Laying My Burdens Down
I haven’t posted here since the middle of October. Instead I’ve been, well, knocking down a series of piñatas that have come floating up one after another. Slow-moving targets, but each requiring a fair amount of energy to knock down In the last few weeks, I have: Finished drafting HEAVEN IN FLAMES. (Will probably requ
Read entry →October 16, 2025 · 420 words
Oyez Oyez
So today I filed the paperwork— actually an online form— claiming my share of the Anthropic settlement. Anthropic is an company which has trained its AI, called Claude, on vast numbers of books, song lyrics, and other stolen copyrighted matter, and which has now offered its victims $1.5 billion in compensat
Read entry →September 30, 2025 · 244 words
Naked Truth
I visited my physical therapist this afternoon. We were born in the same town (Duluth), and went to the same junior high school (Ordean). He was a year behind me and we didn’t know each other. My family left town, and he went on to become a ski jumping champion and twice a member of […]
Read entry →September 21, 2025 · 508 words
Mist
This is Prince Rupert, B.C., or so I believe. And yes, it was named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine, cousin of Charles I and his principal commander during the Civil War. After the Restoration, Rupes returned to Britain along with the new king, and invested heavily in the Hudson Bay Company, getting so much […]
Read entry →September 2, 2025 · 54 words
Where’s Wally?
Where’s Wally? Right here, if you want to know. Wally is the name given a boss humpback in the Prince Rupert Sound, and is easily identified by the two spots on the white ventral surface of its tail fins. When you’re looking at Wally, Wally is also looking at you. Just a friendly warning.
Read entry →September 2, 2025 · 225 words
The Pod
We have snaked out of the U.S. and back into B.C. MV Imperial Shadow spent the day in Prince Rupert, while we ventured forth to see cetaceans from yet another catamaran. Again it was a day of miraculous sun. It’s almost drought conditions here, and I’ll return to New Mexico full of tales of the […]
Read entry →September 1, 2025 · 268 words
Wildlife
Eagles and bears are the two critters that most visitors here want to see here in AK— well, maybe I should add whales to the list— but so far my wildlife adventures haven’t achieved greatness. Here’s an eagle, one of a pair. They were some distance away, but my Canon has a 50-to-one zoom and […]
Read entry →August 31, 2025 · 112 words
Splash
The Dawes Glacier was calving like crazy on this warm afternoon, but not when my camera was pointing in the right direction. Here’s the best photo I got: it shows nothing falling but it does show the big splash afterward. The sound was a big BOOM followed by the crash of water as the ice […]
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